Halloween 2007
Not a big Halloween for us. We really didn’t do much or hit any parties, but it was special because it was the first Halloween that Logan was old enough to actually Trick-or-Treat.
Logan was a scary tiger this year and did a pretty good “roar” to match. We met up with some neighbor friends and took him around the neighborhood. He seemed to have a lot of fun even if he was a little overwhelmed by the affair. He was happy to sort his treats in his little basket for days afterwards until mommy and daddy managed to eat most of them :) Yup, we are mean parents – no candy for Logan. We let him have the pretzels and oreo cookies from his basket and he was happy to have them. He didn’t even realize the rest was edible and is still playing with some of those foil wrapped chocolate coins.
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Logan turns 2
Last week Logan turned two. For some who know us, those 2 years might have seemed to fly by, but not for us. These past 2 years will go down as the longest 2 in my life to date. But we came out of it relatively healthy….a few more stress wrinkles, slightly fatigued brains, bent backs, … well at least we came out of it somewhat functional.
Logan is now more of a little boy than a baby. He now talks pretty well, can play with a little more advanced toys, feed himself, and climb on everything. He knows all of his letters, numbers, and colors. All in all, he is set to grow up pretty fast from this point on.
The only downside of this advancement is his realization that he can defy his mommy and daddy. This streak of independence and will is already sparking pretty strong in him and I’m sure it is going to make for more hectic times at the Hartley household.
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Bear Island, NC Camping
Our first kayak camping trip! I chose Bear Island because it is a pretty popular kayak/canoe camping island, undeveloped, and relatively easy to get to. Not knowing much about coastal kayaking, I figured it would be a safe introduction.
Heavy winds greeted us on the way out which made for a difficult beginning. The intercoastal waterway was rough and it was a battle just to keep moving in the direction we wanted. The chop and current moved us off course and we decided to just plow right into the tidal marsh area which was shallow and thus protected from the rough waves. So we headed across the intercoastal waterway toward the marsh. About halfway there, a group of dolphins passed us heading the other way. Very cool but we didn’t have too much time to enjoy it as we needed to get back to battling the seas. We made it to the tidal marsh and then worked our way towards the island. A little more fighting the main channel and we made it to a protected inlet in the island where we could park our boats and head for our campsite.
The island was about as expected. Coastal island with dunes, small scrub, and a few shrubby trees. There were more “facilities” on the island than I’d figured including bathrooms (flush), showers, and picnic tables. But with only one other couple on the entire island, it still felt pretty desolate.
We had planned on setting up camp and then kayaking around the marsh side of the island a bit but the rough seas changed our mind. We ended up just chilling, walking on the beach, and reading. A great escape for our normal crazy child-filled lives.
Saw a good number of Bottle-nosed Dolphins feeding in the surf which was awesome. I don’t spend much time near the ocean so the dolphins were a highlight for me. We were expecting more birds than were present but I think migration is over and everything interesting has already moved down to Mexico.
After a lazy morning the next day, we pack up the boats and head back under great weather. With only mild wind, the kayaking was like night and day from our experience on the way in. The main channel was calm and we paddled leisurely making great time back to the dock. We wish we could have stayed another day to get more boating in, but we had to head back home.
Overall just the kind of trip we needed. Some fun adventure with lots of relaxing in between. More trip photos at my smugmug site.
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Stellarium
I recently was on business back in Reno, NV. Actually I was about 3 hours out of Reno, about 1hr north of Winnemucca for those who know Nevada. For you who don’t, I was way out there by normal standards but maybe not by Nevada standards. Anyway, having been away from Nevada for a year or so, I was stunned at the night sky. Even in a populated area (sparse but unshielded pole lamps, etc) the sky was dripping with stars. The milky way was amazingly well defined and looked like a brilliant road across the sky.
I think everyone should try to see the stars under such condition at least occasionally, just to see what they are missing. Here on the east coast, such a view is pretty much impossible to find. It makes me recall being at the base camp for Mt. Whitney on a moonless night – you could almost see well enough by the starlight alone to find camp.
If you have any interest in astronomy and have a laptop, you owe it to yourself to install Stellarium on your laptop. It is software that simulates the sky based on your location. It is well done with tons of features including real time movement of the sky, customizable view, and even a night mode so that you can use it on your laptop in the dark without screwing up your night vision. Best thing is that it is free, open source, and works on linux/unix or windows.
So all of you in remote locations that actually have a night sky to view, pack up your laptop and check it out.
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New boats!
A few weeks back Lara and I each bought sea kayaks. After some demoing we both settled on the Wilderness Systems Tempest, 16.5′ for Lara and 17′ for me. We found Lara’s used in California and had it shipped. I was twice lucky with my boat – found a 17′ one on REI’s website on clearance for a great price. Then when it arrived, it had a large but very fixable dent. They took 20% off the already clearance price. Had no problem fixing the dent so overall a great purchase. Looking forward to spending some time on the water.
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Xbox Media Center
Over the past few years I’ve has several setups that allowed me to watch/listen to media from my computer on my TV. For a while I just had a computer hooked to the TV with a video card that had composite output. That worked but was irritating and I could never get the font right to really be able to read the TV as a monitor and the cordless mouse kinda sucked as a controller from the couch. After moving back to NC, I ditched the computer and just bought a DVD player that could read Xvid, Mpeg, etc. This worked well and was tidy but I still had to burn the files to DVD in order to view them and inevitably there would be some codec issue that made 10-15% of videos not play. ugg.
I’d been hearing good things about using the original Xbox as a media center so I figured I’ve give it a go. You can get the original Xbox for less than $100 used and I found a good one on ebay. The big plus was that I didn’t need to shell out for a mod-chip for the machine, you can “softmod” the Xbox using a software hack. Lots of sites out there saying how to do this and I’m not going to bother linking as I ended up using a amalgamation of many of them. It was a little confusing since all of the info is a few years old – I guess most have moved on to the Xbox 360.
Anyway, softmod complete, I grabbed the Xbox Media Center (XBMC) and installed it pretty fast and it is as close to perfect as I could have imagined. Looks great on my old crappy TV screen. Menu’s easy to read, easy to navigate. Can read my windows network shares so I can easily listen or watch any media directly from my PC. I can store the media on the xbox and can rip DVDs directly from the xbox to its hard drive. No codec issues and, so far, no software issues. Extra bonus is that the xbox I bought came with the xbox dvd remote which looks just like a DVD player remote. XBMC supports it as a controller so I can navigate all controls with the remote so I don’t need to use the game controller.
I know that I om way late on this particular bandwagon and that there are lots of more eloquent and informational blogs and websites devoted to the XBMC, but I had to give it a note as is so refreshing to find such a perfect fit for a task that I’ve had so much trouble with over the years.
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Great Basin Rattlesnake
The water snake made me think about this photo of a Great Basin Rattlesnake that I took on the approach to Orderville Canyon in Zion National Park last year. This is the only species rattlesnake that I’ve ever encountered to my recollection which isn’t too surprising considering I’ve lived in the Great Basin during most of my time in the western US. Even so, I think I’ve only seen maybe 4 or 5 in the wild – 2 or 3 of those being at the Lover’s Leap climbing area which is a hotbed for rattlesnakes.
Anyway, these guys are supposedly milder than most rattlesnakes with less toxic venom. Some don’t even rattle. Coloration varies but are generally similar in color to Gopher Snakes. They inhabit semi-airid, rocky, areas in Nevada, Utah, Idaho, and Oregon live around 10-20 years.
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Red-headed Woodpecker!
I’ve been wanting to see one of these guys for a long while. When we moved into our house Lara and I saw one very far away but, while we could positively id it, I just wasn’t satisfied because I couldn’t really see the details. Fast forward to a week ago and Lara said a Red-headed came to our feeder. Awesome. Finally, today, this one flew right past me landing in a tree not 5 feet from me for an instant and then flew off. A bit later Lara pointed it out in our backyard up in a tree. Quick grab of the camera and I got it – not the prettiest angle but a close view none-the-less.
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Northern Water Snake
We took Logan out for a short hike to Umstead Park this past weekend. We hiked down to the river and I remembered taking the above photo at that same spot the last time we took Logan out to Umstead – about a year ago. So I dug it up and here it is – I’m not 100% positive but I’m going with Northern Water Snake.
I’m no good at snake id and the Northern Water Snake has a lot of variation in color which makes id even harder. A non-venomous snake, these guys are often mistaken for cottonmouths. Despite its lack of ability to kill you, the Northern Water Snake won’t hesitate to bite you and it has an anticoagulant in its saliva that will make you bleed a lot from the bite. So maybe just leave them alone.
Guess what they eat?
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Zion National Park Trip 2007
Met up with Charles, Alison, and Ana in Zion National Park a few weeks back for some canyoneering fun. Awsome as always, we had a blast. The canyons of choice this year were Behunin and Englestead, both of which were long long hauls that we’d avoided in previous years due to the length. We rose to the challenge this year and I thought it was worth putting in the long days as both were terrific. Behunin has a dramatic end rappel that tops off a great day of canyoneering and Englestead has a dramatic entrance rappel that sets the mood early for an awesome day. Pictures really don’t do canyons justice but you can check out some on my photo page.
I could go on for a page about how nice Zion NP is but I’m going to give them a quick shoutout for their excellent canyon quota system. You must have a permit to canyoneer all of the canyons in the park and they issue a fairly low number of permits for each canyon each day. Also, they do not allow guided groups in the park. Both of these combine to make for a great backcountry experience for you. We have been canyoneering at Zion each year for about 3-4 years and have hardly ever encountered another party in a canyon. And I can only think of one time when we were actually inconvenienced by the other party which was in a very short, very popular, canyon – Pine Creek. But aside from that one exception, during each of these day-long canyon experiences, we’ve hardly encountered anyone in the canyon. That fact alone, for me anyway, really adds to the whole trip. Hurray to Zion National Park and their restrictive permit system!
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